Beckham David - David Beckham: my side

To Victoria, Brooklyn and Romeo

The three people who always make me smile

My Babies Forever

Love David

What matters most in my life I can see in front of me.

In Madrid, the evenings are perfect like this more often than not. Its just gone seven, the suns down from the sky but its still warming my heart and warming my bones. Theres a glass of red wine on the table in front of me. And another in front of Victoria. Brooklyns being some kind of superhero, plunging in and out of the little pool a few yards down the garden from this terrace where Mr and Mrs are sitting, feet up, cheering him on. Romeos at the bottom of the steps that take you out onto the grass, being best friends with Carlos. Thats the dog, not the left-back. Its a long way from Chingford but, just like the house I grew up in, its not just a casa. It feels like a home, somewhere you belong. Un hogar, they call it in Spain.

Back from a summer away and Euro 2004, weve found a place to live together, the four of us, here in Madrid. Weve taken a three-year lease my contract at Real finishes in 2007 on a house in La Moraleja, a residential area to the north of the city. Were twenty minutes from the training ground and from the Santiago Bernebeu; half an hour from the middle of town. And just a few minutes from where Brooklyn is going to start school next month. La Moraleja is green and quiet todo tranquillo and the trees spread shade across our garden, which I can see the end of from here, for most of every day.

Ive got my first competitive game of a new season waiting for me in a weeks time, after last season left Real Madrid needing to qualify for the group stage of the Champions League this time around. Its crossed my mind a couple of times recently that we had to do the same at United before going on to win the thing back in 1999. I dont know if you could ever have quite the same feeling ahead of a new season with any other club: here at Real our own sense of ambition in the dressing room is as tangible as the sense of expectation around the streets of the city. This is a football club, after all, where anything anything at all seems possible. Each fresh start feels like history waiting to be made. Whats more, we know we owe the madridistas after what happened to us and to them last spring.

Ive been in Madrid for twelve months now. A year ago, all of it was new, and as confusing as it was exciting. I was waiting to find out what was expected of me; what I could expect from life at a new club and in a new city. Now, Ive found my way past most of those questions. I mean: I know now what Im going to be asked. The answers, of course, will have to wait for kick-off. And a new manager at the Bernebeu, Jos Antonio Camacho, has already made sure we understand that well need to find the right ones.

To say a lots happened since I left the club I grew up at, Manchester United, and came to Spain to start learning all over again, wouldnt be the half of it. Some of whats gone on I could perhaps have been half-expecting. Most of it, though, I had no idea at all about when I got here a season and a major international tournament ago. I can still remember the adrenalin rushing through my system the August morning I was introduced to Madrid as a Real player. At the Pabellon Raimundo Saporta, Id been hurried through corridors and then ushered onto a stage alongside the President, Florentino Perez, and the greatest player ever to pull on the white shirt that I was going to wear for the next four years, Alfredo di Stefano.

Thinking back now, one thing nags me about that day. Especially after the shocks and challenges and lessons Ive learnt over the months since. Amidst all that felt just right that morning, one thing jarred at the time and still does. Now, in August 2004, Im grateful to put right a choice of words I made before my life was turned upside down during a year in Spain, back home in England and at Euro 2004. The last twelve months have reminded me if I needed reminding whats made the whole adventure worth the living so far.

When it came time for me to speak to the press and to the Real supporters, my voice trailing away across that hangar of a basketball court, I remember I said:

I have always loved football. Of course I love my family and I have a wonderful life. But football is everything to me. To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.

Football and my family: know about them and you know most of what you need to about David Beckham. Back then, though, I had those things the things that have made me the person I am in the wrong order.

I probably knew then. And I definitely know it about myself now. Footballs the best game in the world, the best career I could possibly have been lucky enough to enjoy. Its given me fulfilment and a lot more besides. But everything to me? No, Im sitting here on a terrace at our new home in Moraleja and what matters most in my life in anybodys life, surely I can see in front of me. I can put my arms around them right now: my wife and my two sons. Theyre what Im here for. I hope Ill never have to, but Id sacrifice what I do for a living and everything its brought my way without a second thought to have what I have having them. I met Victoria, fell in love with and married her and, together, weve made our family. Until you love your own children, you never realise quite how much your mum and dad loved you. Im ready to do for my family what Mum and Dad did for me: everything. Doesnt matter how exciting, frantic or rewarding the rest of it is, its Victoria and Brooklyn and Romeo who make sense of it all.

To play for Real Madrid is a dream come true.

Thats right enough. And it keeps coming true every time I pull Reals white shirt over my head. But for us Beckhams, here together with the warm air wrapped round us, back in England or wherever else the futures going to take us: its the together that counts: I could never have imagined how sweet it would be until it happened. And it has for me; and for my wife and for my children too. Our lives have come true: a family. Whatever lies ahead of us, I wont ever let them go.